State of Black America (Again)

The panelists included the Rev. Al Sharpton, president and founder of the National Action Network, TV and radio personality Jeff Johnson, and C. Virginia Fields, president and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

Tripp asked the panelists:

We’ve got a black president. Is that it?

Sharpton observed:

We’re in the best of times and the worst of times. We are in positions we were never in before. But on the ground, life has not fundamentally changed.

Sharpton pointed to the black unemployment rate, education achievement gap and prison industrial complex. He noted that “putting black faces in high places” is not enough: